This invention relates to a slide feeding unit for an automatic scanning microscope, wherein the feeding unit includes a slide magazine, a magazine moving mechanism and a slide feeding device.
In the field of pathological research and also, in every-day medical practice there is an ever-increasing need for the application of complex data processing, record keeping and archiving systems, as well as for the interactive consulting possibilities of examination results.
While most developments have been directed to the integration of existing microscopes into systems of the above-outlined type, such an integration is feasible only to a limited extent in microscopes well proven for manual examinations, given the particularities of microscopes of such a design. For example, to take advantage of the speed inherent in digital data processing, a slide feeding system is definitely required which is capable of serving high-performance, automatic slide-digitizing microscopes. For these reasons solutions have been developed which provide for an automatic feed (dosing) of microscope slides.
International Patent Application WO9739348 proposes a solution concerning the problem of transporting microscope slides in a vertical direction. The transporting mechanism includes a pair of vertically side-by-side disposed belts. Each belt is provided with plates oriented in a comb-like pattern perpendicularly to the belt surface. The belts are driven in opposite directions of rotation, so that the plates facing one another between the two belts always move co-directionally (upward or downward). Thus, during transport, the slide, supported by two aligned plates forming a plate pair, is either raised or lowered in a substantially horizontal orientation. At the location where the plates of the plate pair diverge, the slide glides out of the plate pair and may be deposited, for example, on another slide or may drop into a storage box.
The above-described solution, however, does not ensure the correct positioning of the specimens and further, because of the vertical transport direction, such a solution cannot be used in case of a given, optical microscope arrangement.
International Patent Application WO0214877 relates to an apparatus for storing, transporting, arranging and preparing microscope slides. The described slide array preparing device (which may be, for example, a device for applying biological specimens to the slides) includes an elevator unit which raises the slides—taken from an associated storage unit—to the level of the work table forming part of the device. At that position the slides are brought into the desired orientation by an adjusting mechanism. Thereafter a depositing unit, displaceable on a stand and including a vacuum chuck for immobilizing the slides, individually removes the slides and organizes them in array form.
The above-outlined apparatus which has been primarily developed for slide-array printing, has the significant advantage that it eliminates error possibilities derived from a manual positioning of the slides, apart from disposing of time-intensive human labor. The apparatus, however, is voluminous as a whole, and its units are complex mechanical arrangements optimized for their tasks to be performed while the slide dwells in the printer. Thus, such an apparatus would not ensure a sufficient working speed in other fields of application.